Note: This article pertaining to Customer Service is More Than a Drink and Recognition was originally published on Wednesday, November 22, 2017 at 2:40 in the afternoon and has been updated.
American Airlines wanted the members of its flight crews to both serve a pre departure beverage and address each passenger by name who was assigned a seat in the premium cabins of its fleet back in November of 2017. That a significant amount of effort was expended on a small percentage of the passengers when most of the other passengers in the economy class cabin were simply happy to physically get into a seat and find a space for the baggage that they carried aboard the airplane.
Customer Service is More Than a Drink and Recognition.
The indifference of customers by companies seems to have increased in 2025 — especially with artificial intelligence, which many companies misuse as a way to cut costs on human capital. As an example, I had a minor issue with a company which I needed resolved; so on Thursday, November 20, 2025, I used the Chat feature on the official Internet site of the company.
Here is the transcript of that chat — and note the time stamps of the chronology in order to resolve a simple question:
Start time: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:49 PM
End time: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 09:15 PM
Bot: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:49 PM
Hi! Welcome to XXX. To chat with an agent, please press the button below
Chat with an agent
Bot: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:49 PM
Connecting you to a live agent…
Bot: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:54 PM
An agent has joined the conversation.
Louis joined the conversation
Agent: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:54 PM
Thank you for contacting Xxx.com, my name is Louis. How can I help you?
User: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:55 PM
I just booked a reservation with a 20% coupon code that was offered to me when I signed in to way.com; and it did not apply.
Agent: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:56 PM
Please hold , let me check the details.
User: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 07:56 PM
Thank you.
User: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 08:32 PM
Are you still checking the details?
User: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 08:36 PM
Hello?
User: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 08:41 PM
You are supposed to be a live agent. Are you still alive?
Agent: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 08:58 PM
I apologize for the delayed response and appreciate your patience.
Agent: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 09:03 PM
Before proceeding to checkout, there is an option to apply a promo code. Since this reservation has already been booked, the promo code cannot be applied to it. We kindly advise you to use it for your upcoming reservation.
User: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 09:14 PM
You made me wait all this time for an unhelpful and useless response.
User: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 09:14 PM
I do not believe you are a real live human being.
Bot: Thursday, 11/20/2025, 09:15 PM
The user has left the conversation.
That chat consumed a total of 84 minutes, which is wholly unacceptable and inexcusable.
I decided to see what happened if I initiated the chat again. This time, “Calvin” responded instead of “Louis”. The exact same verbiage — including “Please hold , let me check the details.” and the strange space between the word hold and the comma — was used.
I tried a third time but decided to cancel the chat. The response was “I will no longer contact the humans.”
That experience was incredibly frustrating. The company claimed that this chat was live with a human being responding on the other end. I even experienced waiting in a queue before I received a response from an “agent”. That a human being was at the other end of the interaction is without a doubt a blatant lie. This is an example of a company which only does not respect their customers but also believes that they are stupid and would rather save money than provide a decent form of customer service.
An Example of Indifference to the Customer
“And the fans that don’t want to come to the game? I mean, OK. Bye. I mean, if you feel that’s something, we’re disrespecting you, don’t come to the game. You don’t have to. No one’s telling you to come to the game. It’s your freedom of choice to do that.”
That is what Delanie Walker — who is the tight end for the Tennessee Titans football team — reportedly said when members of both his team and the Seattle Seahawks remained in the locker room during the national anthem before their game on Sunday, September 24, 2017, according to this article written by Jason Wolf of the Tennessean.
Setting aside the fact that this incident is part of the ongoing debate pertaining to equal rights and whether or not the national anthem of the United States is racist, it was the attitude of the response which led to an angry response by fans of the National Football League — which included death threats towards Walker and other football players. Those fans are customers who support the team by spending significant amounts of money; and without their patronage — whether that pertains to attending games at the stadium or purchasing products from sponsors who have multimillion dollar contracts with either the team or the National Football League — those players would not be earning the significant salaries for which they earn playing a game which they enjoy.
I am not saying that Walker had no right to express his thoughts and opinions; but now let us place the quote in the context of air travel. Imagine if a member of the flight crew or executive of an airline said “If you do not want to fly on our airline, fine. Do not fly our airline. No one is telling you to fly our airline. It is your freedom of choice to do that.”
While that choice is obviously implied, what would be your reaction about patronizing the airline in the future after hearing or reading that statement?
Final Boarding Call
To me, that statement suggests an obvious indifference to the customer — and at times, employees of airlines, lodging companies, rental car companies, and other travel companies do seem to not want to go the extra mile and care about the customer.
I have given customer service many times in many forms over the years. Half of the battle is listening to — and empathizing with — the person at the other end.
As with almost anyone else who is seated in the premium cabin, I do enjoy that beverage prior to departure and being recognized by name — but that is only part of the equation for me…
…and of course, that does not even apply when seated in the economy class cabin aboard an airplane.
What astonishes me about the leadership of airlines and other corporations is the simple concept of helping and treating customers with respect, dignity, politeness, civility, care, and even empathy is generally overlooked in favor of profits and returns on investments for the short term — it pays to be nice and polite — and certainly throwing in an unexpected small surprise to delight the customer could result in creating a feeling of being special and wanting to return for more, which could indirectly impact the bottom line favorably.
For me, that could be something as simple as asking a member of the flight crew for a bag of pretzels and receiving two or three bags with a smile as a form of appreciation of my patronage to the company.
Then again, perhaps I expect too much from customer service — with this example from a representative of a rental car facility via telephone as one of many which I have experienced over the years…
All photographs ©2016, ©2017, and ©2018 by Brian Cohen.
